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Books, Chapters and Looseleafs

The publication parenthetical, why there is no comma after the author, and how a looseleaf differs.

Chapter 6 covers secondary sources. Two rules here are the ones that most distinguish a New Zealand footnote from an Australian one, and both show up in the first line of a book citation.

No comma after the author

r 6.1.1 puts nothing between the author and the title. This is the single most visible difference from AGLC4, and it touches every secondary source you cite.

Correct
Peter Spiller The Disputes Tribunals of New Zealand (2nd ed, Brookers, Wellington, 2003) at 55.
Incorrect
✗ Peter Spiller, The Disputes Tribunals of New Zealand (2nd ed, Brookers, Wellington, 2003) at 55.

The publication parenthetical includes the place

The bracket after the title carries the edition, the publisher, the place of publication and the year, in that order. AGLC4 has no place of publication at all, so this is the other half of the difference.

Author Title (edition, publisher, place, year) at pinpoint.

18Ross Carter Burrows and Carter Statute Law in New Zealand (5th ed, LexisNexis, Wellington, 2015).

Editions

A first edition is never written. If there is no edition given, the work is a first edition and the slot is simply left out.

The ordinal suffix is not superscript, which inverts the Australian rule.

eBooks

A work that exists only as an eBook adds “eBook ed” after the edition and drops the place of publication (r 6.1.9(b)). An eBook that also exists in hardcopy is cited as the hardcopy.

Volumes

A volume number sits outside the parenthetical, after the year (r 6.1.8(c)).

Authors

Give the name in the form the work itself uses, and do not space initials: “ATH Smith”, not “A T H Smith”.

Drop honorifics. No Sir, Dame, Prof, Dr or QC. Peerage titles and the courtesy “Lord” or “Lady” for United Kingdom Justices stay.

Two or three authors are all named, with “and” before the last. More than three collapses to the first author plus “and others”. It is never “et al”.

Chapters and essays in an edited book

The chapter author and title come first, then “in”, then the whole book citation, then the page the chapter starts on.

The chapter title takes double quotation marks. The book title is italicised.

Author “Chapter” in Editor (ed) Book (publisher, place, year) start page at pinpoint.

24Robin Cooke “Tort and Contract” in PD Finn (ed) Essays on Contract (Law Book Co, Sydney, 1987) 222 at 226.

Looseleafs and online commentary

A looseleaf has no edition or year in the ordinary sense, because it is updated continuously. It carries “looseleaf ed”, the publisher, and how current the version you used was (r 6.3).

Looseleaf paragraph numbers belong to the publisher’s own scheme. Reproduce them exactly.

30Simon France (ed) Adams on Criminal Law – Evidence (looseleaf ed, Brookers, updated to 10 July 2009) at [EA6.01].

Quoting a source you found in another source

r 6.9 lets you cite a source “as cited in” the work you actually read. That chains two complete citations together, so Pincite handles it through the Citation Crafter rather than as a field on the book type.

Where you can get hold of the original, cite the original.

Last reviewed 6 August 2026